Ben Jonson’s To Penshurst and ‘Ideologies of the Renaissance’

Abstract

This article looks at Ben Jonson’s To Penshurst from an Althusserian Marxist point of view. First, the article tries to prove that both the poem and the patronage system, the system that produced it, could be seen as one of the ideological structures of the Renaissance. The poem, however, was an unsung ideological structure. This is because it was inaccessible for the public. On the contrary, it was only read by a selected group of aristocrats of that time. Secondly, the article points out ideologies expressed in the poem. The ideologies manifested here are the notion of The Chain of Being and the Social Order, and Hostility against the Emergence of Capitalism and the New Set of Values in the society. From these two ideologies, one can see the poem as a written record of a class struggle and the changing values of the Renaissance.